


Good Intentions

by sutoribenda



Series: Good Intentions Verse [1]
Category: Band of Brothers, X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Alternate Universe - X-Men Fusion, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-02-07 03:00:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1882590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sutoribenda/pseuds/sutoribenda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a teenager is already hard enough. Dealing with your weird mutant superpowers is a whole other story. Every boy at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters has a childhood just as sad as the last and a pile full of issues to deal with. But eventually, even when it seems most impossible, the strongest bonds imaginable are created between all of them. It's too bad that a couple of feuding mutant grandpas are tearing the young friends apart. This is the story of Easy Company growing up together in an unlikely set of circumstances, as X Men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Richard Winters, age 11, is a miracle

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. So here it is everyone. This fic is like my baby so I'm very excited and nervous to publish it. This is primarily a Band of Brothers fanfic, but it takes place in the X Men universe and features a couple X Men characters, so I suppose it counts as a true crossover even though it feels more like an AU. You don't need much of a knowledge of the X Men universe beyond knowing basic facts that Charles Xavier runs a school for mutant children and Erik is building up a mutant camp to overthrow the humans. But what really matters here are the Easy boys and how their friendships and lives are shaped by having these superpowers and being forced to fight each other in some cases.
> 
> There are quite a few instances throughout this fic where things seem inconsistent. Names are always changing, but there is a reason behind that. Every chapter is focusing on a different character's point of view and each of them calls everyone something different. In this first chapter here, Winters calls himself Richard because he doesn't have his nickname yet. But during Nix' chapter, he's called Dick. And during any of the kids' chapters, he's referred to as Winters. It's always changing and I really hope that doesn't get too confusing. Just letting you all know so nobody gets lost or calls me out on inconsistencies. Also! A lot, if not all, of the Easy Company boys are at least mentioned in this fic. The ones tagged just happen to play a larger role in this fanfic than the others. If I've left out your favorite, I am extremely sorry! There are just so many! However, if your favorite member of Easy doesn't show up, but you've got a cool idea for a superpower for him, feel free to let me know and I'll include it.
> 
> I love this fic so much and I've put everything into it so please tell me what you think in the comments. Also, be sure to thank the amazing secretspy0404.tumblr.com for her incredibly helpful collaborations on the development of this story. I could never have done this without her. Here it goes!

The crisp autumn wind was rustling through the trees and making the tall, brown grasses sway and whisper. And a lithe, pale figure was running through the grasses as fast as his feet could carry him, panting from the panic and exhaustion. The rising sun was reflecting on his bright red hair and his eyes started to burn from staring into the light. The boy had stopped running and was frozen in place, his eyes starting to water from the sun’s rays. He sank to his knees on a particularly dirty patch of ground and put his face in his hands. The cold months coming in were making the leaves on the trees beautiful, but all of the greenness from summer was dying. Everything was dying.

Richard Winters was slowly lowering himself to the ground, his chest heaving with sobs and his fingers frantically running through his hair and down his face. His father had died when Richard was a baby and that presence had been something he had never truly missed in his life. The Winters family lived on a quiet farm in the country and Richard had never felt the need of anyone but his kind and loving mother to parent him. They had been everything to each other for Richard’s entire life and now his mother was gone. And Richard had never felt more lost and alone.

“It’s nothing to worry about, darling,” she had said mere days ago. “The flu always comes and goes when it gets colder. I’ll be fine in a week.” But for the only time that Richard could recall, his mother’s soft assurances had been wrong.

The sun continued its slow ascent into the sky and Richard was still lying on the ground, hugging his knees to his chest and crying a steady stream of tears. His head was beginning to ache because of the force of his sobbing, but the pain of it was only making him cry harder. He felt stuck in some sort of torturous loop between tears of sadness and pain and it seemed like he would never break out of it. But eventually he did. Richard’s sobs slowed down, his breathing returned to normal, and everything around him was still.

He sat back up feeling strange, as though his body wasn’t his own and was being controlled by some other mind. But his thoughts were too muddled and his head was too heavy for it to concern him much. Instead, Richard’s attention was focused on a small, yellow flower that he hadn’t noticed earlier despite it having been right in his line of sight. He had been so distraught, it stood to reason that a flower wouldn’t have caught his attention, but it wasn’t the season for flowers to be growing anywhere, especially in the barren patch of dirt he knelt in. And people always tend to notice the smallest things at the strangest times.

He leaned closer to the flower, deciding that it was probably a chrysanthemum, and smiled slightly to himself. Something small and beautiful still had the will to grow despite all the death around it. But then out of the corner of his eye, Richard noticed other flowers. These were different kinds and colors and he was certain that they hadn’t been there before. He recognized marigolds, wild lilies, and poppies all mixed together and blooming as if it were the peak of springtime.

Richard got to his feet, stumbling slightly with the suddenness of his movement, and walked over to the large patch of flowers. He had never seen anything like this, even in the most plentiful gardens, and especially not out in the wild when autumn was beginning. He huffed out a few breaths, not really laughing and not really crying, but just reveling in this miracle of nature he had wandered into. It could have been a sign from his mother, from god, from _something_ telling him that everything would be alright.

As he started to leave the field, his heart filled with a peaceful sense of calm that had been missing since his mother had first gotten sick, more flowers started to appear just outside of the range of Richard’s vision. He turned around quickly and gaped at the many flowers that were blooming into existence from nothing along the path that Richard had walked. The calm feeling evaporated and Richard was suddenly filled with a sense of panic and confusion at the completely inexplicable phenomenon happening right in front of him. Just as he had entered the field, the boy ran again to try and escape whatever was going on. But he had only made it several seconds of sprinting before he realized that it was useless.

Every time Richard’s Converse shoes had touched the ground, dozens of flowers were appearing and spreading out in every direction. With every step, their expanse became wider and dozens turned into hundreds. Richard watched in disbelief as every color and variety of flower that he had seen in his life, as well as many he was sure he hadn’t, began to grow and take over the brown and grassy field. In what could have been anything between several seconds and a whole lifetime, the entire field had been filled with beautiful wildflowers in full bloom. Richard was breathing hard and his forehead was creased, but he could only think of one way to explain this. He had been given a miracle.

["A Miracle" by secretspyart](http://secretspyart.tumblr.com/post/117540466612/a-young-richard-winters-for-the-band-of-brothers-x)

Two days later, when Richard’s whole family had come to bury Edith Winters, Beloved Wife and Mother, in the family plot, every single flower in the field behind their farmhouse had died. Richard sat at the dining room table, listening to his cousins move around in the upstairs rooms and trying to ignore the words his aunt and uncle were exchanging in the kitchen while preparing dinner.

“Don’t know what to do with him,” he heard his uncle whisper.

“Just a boy,” he heard his aunt whisper back.

And though Richard wished with all of his heart that he couldn’t hear their voices anymore, that things could just go back to the way that they were when his mother was still alive, he was sure he heard the words “Can’t take care of him anymore.”

Just then, the entire house started to shake. Shelves were rattling and picture frames were falling off of the walls and shattering on the floor. His cousins were shrieking above him and Richard heard his aunt shouting at him to get under the table. He did so, but it seemed as though his limbs were moving of their own accord again rather than from any command that he had given them. The moment Richard got under the table, however, the shaking had stopped and silence rang in his ears.

Everyone in the house quickly recovered. Richard’s aunt ran up the stairs to check on her children and his uncle started to clean up the glass shards from the floor. Richard felt as though he was unable to focus on anything until eventually he heard a voice from the television report a small earthquake having just occurred in Lancaster County without warning. That snapped his world back into reality with a terrifying jolt.

Richard had no idea how it could have happened, or even why he was thinking it. That earthquake could not have been caused by him. His mind was telling himself that it was impossible, but the incident with the flowers was just as unlikely of an occurrence. It hadn’t really felt like the flowers had been caused by him. Though maybe he had just been hoping very hard for it to have been some sort of miracle. And though Richard could never begin to explain how or why, it truly felt as though he had caused the earthquake.

~          ~          ~          ~          ~

It took only 24 hours for there to be a knock on the door. Richard was sitting at the dining room table again, scarcely having left it since his mother’s death. He no longer wanted to spend time with his cousins or the rest of his family, but rather just sit where no one would disturb him and read books about history, his favorite subject. Today he was scanning a very exciting novel about World War II that would have fascinated him if he’d been reading it a week ago. But a week ago his mother was alive and his life still made him as content as could be. Today he watched his aunt open the door to a bald man in a wheel chair with a steady smile on his face.

“Hello,” he said in a distinctly English accent. “You must be Mrs. Winters, Richard’s aunt. My name is Charles Xavier.”

He held out a hand for Richard’s aunt to shake, but she only gazed at him, confused. “How do you know Richard?” she asked.

“Well Mrs. Winters,” he began. “I am the professor of a school for very special children. Orphans mostly, but all of them extremely intelligent and gifted. We think Richard would be very at home there.”

At that explanation, she stepped aside and let Professor Xavier into the farm house. “Please,” she said. “Get comfortable. Anything you need. Richard!” she called. “Honey, there’s someone here to see you.”

Richard wrinkled his nose, but set his book down and came into the living room anyway. Professor Xavier opened his mouth to introduce himself, but Richard cut him off. “I heard everything. And I think I’d like to go to your school, Professor. If my family can send me, that is.”

Professor Xavier smiled softly and nodded. “I would love to discuss the specifics with you in private, Richard. If that’s alright with you, Mrs. Winters.”

“Oh yes of course,” she nodded. “I’ll leave you two alone.” And she quickly scurried off, no doubt to find her husband and inform him that their problem with housing Richard might be solved.

Richard sat down in the chair his mother had always favored, an act that he had never dared perform even when she was alive. He always felt more respectful that way. But if this professor would really take him away to a school, this might be one of the last times Richard would ever get the chance to sit here and be reminded of his mother. At least, he planned it to be that way.

After a moment of silence hung between the two, Professor Xavier just smiled in that calming way of his and said “You are very special, Richard. I hope you realize that.”

“Thank you sir,” Richard said with a nod. Though he was mostly just being polite, Richard didn’t feel special at all. He felt cursed, like those changes over the earth were some sort of punishment from a higher power, piled on to the punishment of having his mother taken away from him.

“It isn’t a curse,” Professor Xavier said.

Richard stared. “How did you know—?”

“I’m like you, Richard,” he said. But the words were not spoken aloud. Rather, they echoed inside of Richard’s head, as though Professor Xavier was speaking directly to his mind. “There’s no need to be scared of me or yourself at all. Not anymore.”

There was a pause for a very long time before Richard sighed. “So I’m a mutant then?”

“You are,” Professor Xavier confirmed. “And that is nothing to be ashamed of. As I’ve demonstrated, I myself am a mutant. Everyone at my school is one, you are taught there and trained how to handle yourself and your powers. With the proper treatment, there is nothing to worry about.”

Richard nodded, but he was still skeptical. “How did you find me?” he asked.

“A long time ago, I developed a program called Cerebro,” the Professor explained. “It allows me to use my powers to locate mutant children across the country. When we heard that an earthquake had struck Lancaster County with no obvious causes, it became clear that a new mutant was living in the area. Many natural disasters and strange occurrences can be traced back to children who are scared and alone finding their powers.”

“So then…” Richard began, his eyes trailing to the ground, “Am I dangerous?”

The Professor’s face became very serious at that and he leaned forward in his chair. “Your powers are exceptional, Richard,” he said. “They are very strong and it is very easy for them to get out of control. This leaves us with few options.” Richard nodded, expecting as much. “By going to my school, you would learn to control these powers. But it would take lots of time and practice and I realize how greatly you fear hurting anyone without meaning to. What I think you would most prefer is for me to do is restrain some of your more dangerous impulses, the ones that can cause extreme natural events, until you are able to control them.”

“Restrain them?” Richard asked, his forehead creasing in worry.

“It wouldn’t hurt you a bit,” Professor Xavier promised. “I can put up a mental block that will prevent you from exercising your full strength. Most mutants would wish to keep their powers in full, but—”

“No, no, I want that,” Richard said eagerly. “Whatever is safer for everyone else.”

Professor Xavier smiled. “That’s very good of you, Richard. All that leaves is the matter of what to tell your family. It is, of course, completely up to you. And I will help in any way that I can.”

Richard nodded. “I overheard them saying that they can’t afford to keep me. At least, not now that my mother isn’t here.” He paused, needing a moment to gather himself again after saying it aloud for the first time. “They’ll want to send me to your school. I just. I don’t know what they’ll say about my powers.”

“It’s all up to you,” the Professor said, placing a reassuring hand on Richard’s arm. “Should I give you some privacy?”

“No, it’s fine,” Richard shook his head. “Please stay. I’ll just go get them.”

~          ~          ~          ~          ~

 “Hi there!” A boy with curly hair and a gap toothed smile stuck out his hand for Richard to shake. He appeared to be older than Richard, maybe thirteen, but Richard thought he was already taller. It was hard to tell. “The Professor just told me that we’re gonna be roommates.”

Richard nodded. “I’d shake your hand but you’re a little bit out of my reach,” he said.

The boy laughed and lowered himself from the ceiling until he was hovering just a few inches off of the ground. “I’m Harry Welsh,” he said. “I’ve been here almost a year, ever since my powers developed. My parents wanted me to get a good education and this school really is the best. And you’re Richard Winters?” Richard nodded. “Well it’s good to meet you.”

Despite still feeling a little bit too sorry for himself, Harry’s enthusiasm was infectious, so Richard found himself smiling right back at him. “You too, Harry.”

Harry grinned and started to float absentmindedly in slow circles around Richard. “So what is it that you can do?” he asked.

Richard shrugged. “I can make plants grow,” he said. “And do a few other things.”

“Cool!” Harry replied. “Though I wouldn’t trade gravity manipulation for anything. I don’t understand how people can just walk everywhere. And why bother picking things up when you can just float them around? It must suck.”

Richard chuckled slightly. “I’ve never really thought about it like that.”

Harry shook his head. “No, I guess you wouldn’t. But anyway, you’ll really like it here. The teachers are all so great and sometimes I get to work with the little kids. It’s amazing!”

“So there are lots of students here then?” Richard asked. But he was only sort of interested in the answer. He walked over to the bed that was going to be his and started pulling things out of his backpack. The repetitive motions were calming and Harry’s voice filled the potential silence.

“Oh yeah,” replied Harry. “The other kids our age are great. A lot of them want to come back and be teachers like I do. Lipton’s only a few years older than me, but he’s already talking with the Professor about colleges. College! Can you imagine? I just can’t wait.”

When Richard had finished unpacking, he sat down on the bed and encouraged Harry’s descriptions of the other students, the scary gym teacher who he was convinced didn’t age, and his own dreams of one day being an elementary teacher. “It’s what I’m always wanted to do,” Harry explained. “I just love kids so much. And my powers only make everything better! Imagine how much fun playing Superman with kindergartners will be if I can literally fly them around the room. And I can throw books at troublemakers in detention. Gosh, I can’t wait!”

It went on like that for a while. Harry would go on about his big ideas for the future, Richard would calmly follow along, and they formed a wonderful friendship. Richard finally felt like he had a place in the world where he could be truly comfortable on his own. His family had not accepted him and it broke Richard’s heart. They were good people, the best and kindest around, but some just couldn’t handle it when they found out a mutant was living in their home. They were not angry when he had told them, or hysterical or disappointed or anything like that when he explained his mutation. But rather, they were afraid. Not in the way that so much of society was where they would call for the persecution of every mutant in the world for their own sakes, but in a way that Richard knew would create a gap he could never bridge no matter how many years went by.

He was truly an orphan now, so listening to Harry go on and on about his loving and supporting parents and his plans for children of his own in the future made Richard feel wistful and filled with hope that he hadn’t felt since before his mother’s death. Sometimes it hurt to think like that, but most of the time it was nice to be around someone whose positivity could help Richard be the same way. The two boys did everything together and balanced out each others’ personalities effortlessly.

Carwood Lipton joined their friendship as well and when he did finally go off to college, none were more excited for him than Richard and Harry. They’d all braved Speirs’ gym class together, eventually learning to excel at combat training and working off of each other’s fighting styles, so after that there was no way that getting an education degree could be any scarier than what they’d already been through. Harry followed suit soon after, bouncing through the air with delight at finally taking the next step towards being an elementary educator. Richard, however, stayed behind.

He had always loved learning about history more than anything and the teacher was Professor Xavier himself. Other than Harry and Carwood, Richard’s closest bond was with the Professor. He had become like the father Richard had never been able to grow up with. Most days, Richard would sit in on his lectures hanging on to every word and sometimes they would just spend a casual afternoon together discussing their favorite notable events of the past. Going to college for an education degree so that he could one day take over for the Professor was something that Richard would have loved, a secret dream of his, but after leaving his family it just wasn’t possible. So Richard tried his hardest to content himself with being Professor Xavier’s teaching assistant and helping out with the younger children in Harry’s absence.

And though Richard would have rather been teaching or going to college like his two best friends were, he had a passion like Professor Xavier did for helping children adjust to their new lives at the school for mutant powers. New students came every year and it was always a different story. Usually there was an influx of students during the summer months when the Professor was able to devote all of his time to searching for mutant children in need. They were from all over the country and their powers were as differed as themselves. But Richard loved getting to know them all and delighted in the friendships everyone would make.

Richard would especially never forget the range of emotions he felt when they managed to bring two young boys who had been hiding out in a cave for several months back to the mansion safely. One had the power of super speed and the other was able to reduce or enhance mutations in others, making them able to quickly travel around the country and away from dangers for a long time before the Professor had been able to pinpoint their location. When they had been brought in and cleaned off, their astonishment and gratitude at being accepted by other people like them had elated Richard to the point of near tears.

The extreme cases like those two boys were brought in urgently from their abusive homes or hideaways on the run, always looking battered and terrified. But just as many were dropped off by their smiling parents, though it was hard to tell whether they smiled in support or ignorance of their child’s mutation. During the New Year, a boy named George was dropped off by his extremely large family. Richard was very impressed with his mimicry and illusions, but he had to control his impulse to make the whole room shake when he learned that George was lying to his parents about being a mutant.

“They just think I have a scholarship,” the boy explained. “None of them know I have powers. It’s better that way.”

“But why didn’t you want to tell them?” Richard asked, helping George bring all of his bags to his second floor dorm.

The boy shrugged. “I don’t want them to be mad at me.”

Richard frowned, remembering how sure he had been that his family wouldn’t change how they acted around him when they learned of his mutation. It still hurt to think about, and that had been eight years ago. He hadn’t seen them since. “Well no matter what you tell your family, you are safe here. All of us want to help you learn and grow.”

“What about the old man?” George asked.

Richard’s forehead creased. “Professor Xavier? Well of course, this is his school. No one wants to help you succeed more than he does.”

George shook his head. “No,” he insisted. “The other one.”

“Other one?” Richard asked, though his blood had run cold. “George, what happened?”

“Professor Xavier came to our house at Christmas to tell my parents that I could go to school here. But yesterday another old man came to our house. He said he would bring me here, but my parents were bringing me today so they said no and he left.”

Richard set George’s bags down and turned around to face him. “George,” he asked urgently. “What did this man look like.”

“Like this,” George responded in a perfect imitation. Though when he changed his voice to sound like the old man’s, he projected an illusion as well. Standing before Richard was a man he had seen before, but never in person. Every since he had arrived at the mansion, Richard had been warned that the Professor’s old friend would try to take his powers and turn him against his friends. It was Magneto.


	2. George Luz, age 7, is a witness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! A huge thank you to everyone who gave kudos and added comments on the first chapter. It means so much to me, you have no idea. This chapter's a bit shorter than the last one and some interesting dynamics are going to start getting into gear. The first chapter is more of a prologue, so there's been a big time jump. And we've got George Luz as our central character here which is very interesting! Fun fact, this story was originally going to be much shorter than I'm planning to make it now and it was going to be entirely from Luz' point of view. As we developed more ideas for more of the characters, that just didn't fit anymore, but the chapters where he plays a big part are super special to me for that reason. 
> 
> Also as the story goes on and the characters get older, the style of my writing will change a bit as well because once they're all teens, I try to sound more like I'm presenting those thoughts. Right now, since Luz is still a kid, I'm a bit more distant with what he's thinking and feeling because I don't really know how to write seven year olds. My apologies if this seems too unrealistic for that reason. 
> 
> Anyway, as always please enjoy and don't forget to comment!

George Luz had barely been at Xavier’s School for half a year when he finally got to feel like he had an important place there. He loved showing off his powers to Don and Skip and getting to see theirs in return. He had found a best friend in his roommate Frank Perconte, always willing to go on adventures with him and get in and out of trouble. He missed his family all the time, but they wrote to him often and the predictably loud situation of living with mutant children was quiet and peaceful to his many overactive siblings. It was nice when the mansion was really filled with activity though, the kind to rival that of his household. When Lipton had arrived home from college, officially able to be hired as the school’s new English professor, the uproar over his return was monumental. It had reminded George of what it felt like to be a part of a family. But even then, he still felt a little out of place and useless.

It seemed like everyone around him had powers that were more useful than his own. The older students were starting combat training and self defense lessons, but George knew that there would be nothing he could do once he was their age. He was able to trick people into thinking he was someone else, but what good would that do anyone outside of pulling pranks? He had always played with the idea of being a spy when he got older, but now that he was here at the mansion with other kids just like him, he could see that their powers were so much better than his.

After he had told Winters what had happened right before he’d gotten to the school, Professor Xavier had called the entire school together to warn them about Magneto. He was an incredibly dangerous man who would seemingly do everything in his power to get to mutant children before the Professor could. If he hadn’t left when George’s parents attempted to send him away, George wouldn’t have been able to fight back or get to safety or anything. All he had been able to do was stand in front of a crowd and show them all what Magneto looked like. His _family_ had been in danger and it was his fault and there wasn’t a thing he could have done to help them.

Frank loudly shifted around in his sleep, breaking through George’s thoughts. It was the peak of July when every few days were either filled with intense heat or summer lightning storms. George liked to watch the lightning streak across the sky and he found the sound of rain hitting the window by his bed very calming. But George was also a very light sleeper, so as much as he enjoyed the summer storms, they kept him awake for most of the night. It was close to one in the morning, there had been storms for the past three days, and George was lying awake on his bed on the second floor of the mansion, watching the dark sky and listening to his roommate’s heavy breathing, when suddenly chaos erupted.

It started calmly and quietly, as most things do, with just a faint sound reaching George’s ears through the pounding of the rain on his window. The sound could have been crying or yelling or both, but it was just quiet enough that George could pass it off as his own imagination for a long moment. Once the alarm system that Logan had insisted on started blaring, however, there was no questioning what George had heard.

“What’s going on?” Frank had shot up in bed at the noise, but was looking groggy.

“Someone’s here and the alarms are going off,” George explained. The students had always been trained to get out of their bedrooms and into the elevators that would take them to the much safer tunnels under the house as quickly as possible in emergency situations, but George grabbed Frank’s hand.

“I need you to take us to the front door,” he said.

Frank looked confused. “But why? We’re supposed to go to the tunnels. The Professor said—”

“Trust me, Frank,” George pleaded, tightening his grip on Frank’s hand as the familiar feeling of teleporting from one place to another surrounded him. It was as if, for a split second, he existed in some other universe entirely, before he and Frank touched down again at the foot of the front staircase. Just as he thought, the noise and cause for alarm wasn’t an intruder or an enemy at all.

Several teachers and older students were standing at the front door while other students who had been heading for the tunnels had stopped to watch the events unfold. At the door was a boy scarcely older than George himself holding a toddler in his arms. They were both soaking wet and covered in mud. The older boy’s eyes were wide and his grip on the redheaded child was so tensed that it looked like he would run off with him without hesitation if there were any signs of a threat. Professor Xavier had already arrived at the foyer of the mansion, a look of determined calmness on his face. He ushered the boys into the house and out of the rain before turning away the other teachers, telling them to get the students back to bed right away and turn off the alarm.

“The poor boy is crying because he’s very scared,” the Professor said in a steady voice. The students who had remained to see the action all had their eyes fixed on him. “I need everyone to leave before he becomes even more panicked. But please bring blankets and food as soon as you can.” One last older student, it looked like Richard Winters from the corner of George’s eye, herded the curious children back to their rooms and rushed along behind them, presumably to bring down blankets for the new boys. Just as George turned to Frank so they could go back to his bedroom, Professor Xavier called to him.

“You can stay, George,” he said. “I think you’ll be a great deal of help to these two right now.”

George didn’t really understand what the Professor meant, but he stayed regardless. Frank gave him a shrug and disappeared back upstairs to their room, leaving only a small puff of smoke behind. Alone now, George shifted awkwardly and tried to ignore the glare he was being given by the older boy. Meanwhile the toddler’s wailing had thankfully calmed down to quiet sobs as the Professor approached him. “Hello Edward,” he said, his voice so quiet and comforting that it made George shiver as his memories of when he first came to the mansion resurfaced. “My name is Charles and you’re safe here.”

The redhead turned his face away from the Professor and clung on to the older boy. “How’d you know his name?” the boy demanded, taking a deliberate step backwards.

“I think you know why,” the Professor replied. “I’m Professor Charles Xavier and this is my school. I believe you two belong here, is that correct?”

The boy nodded slowly. “I— I saw something on TV about this place. And about people who had powers. I knew I was different and I’d always been keeping it hidden. But Babe was just down the street and he’s so little and he couldn’t hide anything. His parents were being so horrible and I knew I just had to come!” Professor Xavier held up a calming hand.

“You did the right thing,” the Professor said with nothing but pure conviction in his voice. “What’s your name?”

“Bill Guarnere,” the boy said. “I could hear the screaming and Babe was crying and I just couldn’t stand it anymore. We came all this way from Philadelphia.”

To the untrained eye, Professor Xavier’s expression didn’t change a bit, but George knew how to read people’s faces and he noticed the small crease in his forehead and hardening of his jaw that were dead giveaways of the Professor’s anger. “I’m thankful you managed to travel safely,” he said finally, in a restrained voice. “Are either of you hurt?”

Bill shook his head. “I took real good care of Babe this whole way. Only we didn’t have any money and it’s been raining. We ate as much as we could though; I’d had some food packed for us. I didn’t know it would take this long for us to get here, but I made sure Babe ate.”

The firm line of the Professor’s mouth turned up at the corners slightly at that. He wasn’t angry at Bill, but rather this terrible situation that two young boys had been forced to live through. Just then, Winters returned from upstairs with large and soft blankets in his hands. He offered one to Bill and attempted to take the child from his arms and wrap him up comfortably, but the boy had started crying again, screaming at the thought of being separated from Bill’s arms.

“Edward,” Professor Xavier said, his voice flowing into that convincing tone that George knew so well. “Bill’s been holding you for a very long time and we need to get you dry.” They stared at each other for a long moment and George suspected that the Professor was speaking to the small boy silently, with his mind. The child sniffled, but nodded his head and allowed Winters to lift him from Bill’s arms and wrap the blanket securely around him. “I’ll hold onto Edward from here,” the Professor said to all of them. “Richard, would you please find them dry clothes right away?”

“Of course, Professor,” Winters nodded and rushed off again.

Professor Xavier had set the boy in his lap and was attempting to towel dry his red hair with the fluffy blanket Winters had brought. “Isn’t this much better Edward?” the Professor asked, giving him a small smile. The boy didn’t say anything, but scrunched up his face and whined a little instead.

“He likes it when I call him Babe,” Bill said, his voice small and quiet and his eyes on the puddles of water his clothes had dripped onto the floor.

“Babe?” the Professor asked, turning his eyes back to the child. “Is that you?”

George watched the boy, Babe, smile for the first time and nod at the Professor. Professor Xavier’s eyes softened and he smiled right back. “Well hello Babe. We’re going to get you all warm and dry, I promise.”

As if on cue, Winters returned with a small pile of neatly folded clothes for the boys. “Ah, perfect Richard,” the Professor said. “Could you please give those to Bill and George? We can take it from here.”

Winters nodded, handing Bill the larger clothes and the small ones that were meant for Babe got handed to George. “There is a washroom one door down that hallway,” the Professor said to Bill. “Clean yourself up, it’ll make you feel much better. George and I can take care of Babe right here.”

Bill glanced down the hall but then looked back to Professor Xavier with creases in his forehead. “I don’t think I should leave Babe alone,” he said, a nervous shake in his voice.

“I promise Babe is safe in our hands,” the Professor assured him.

“But he gets nervous without me,” Bill said.

The Professor nodded. “Don’t worry. That’s why I asked George here to stay with us. Babe will never even know you’ve gone.”

Bill turned his attention to George and narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?” he asked suspiciously.

“What do you mean?” George parroted back in an exact impression of Bill’s voice. The boy’s eyes had widened and were darting back and forth between Professor Xavier and George, shocked to see himself staring back from where George had been standing. Babe took no notice of the two Bills that were suddenly in the room since his eyes had not been on George when he spoke.

“My school is filled with students just like you Bill. They all have unique abilities and they’ve all faced challenges like you have. We take care of each other here.” The Professor’s hand was running through Babe’s hair and George had dropped his illusion.

“It’s okay,” George said. “You can go get changed and I’ll make sure Babe doesn’t get upset.”

Bill looked like he was going to say something in reply, but just nodded instead. He shot a concerned glance at Babe, but continued down the hall anyway, getting to the door of the bathroom and phasing through it instead of opening it. George had raised his eyebrows at this but Professor Xavier just looked pleased. He nodded to George.

“Okay Babe,” George said in Bill’s voice. The child turned around and George’s illusion projected right away. It was then that George realized that his powers could have a useful purpose. He had been the only one in the entire school able to perform this task for Professor Xavier. It felt like the first time he could be more than an entertaining trick for his friends.

“Let’s get you in some new clothes, yeah?” Babe nodded and lifted his arms above his head so that George could pull his wet shirt off. George helped the kid out of the soaked shirt and his mouth immediately dropped open. Sprouting from Babe’s back was a small pair of pure white, albeit dripping wet, feathery wings.


	3. William Guarnere, age 8, is a brother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm slowly recovering from my wisdom teeth surgery and have finally gotten back into the swing of writing. A lot of this, and a few sections of future chapters, just poured out of me which is really good. The whole thing is being written totally out of order so I hope you're all okay with some occasionally long periods between updates. I really want to stick with a schedule so I can actually motivate myself to finish this, but that doesn't always happen. Especially because this story is just being written in completely random sections.
> 
> And for anyone loving this story so far, I've got some cool and funny things on my tumblr under the tags "good intentions verse" and "band of brothers edit". Please check them out and comment on this new chapter!

When Bill Guarnere had washed most of the mud off of his face and dried himself off, he quickly returned to the living area where Professor Xavier and the boy who had imitated him were sitting with Babe. As soon as Babe caught sight of Bill, he hopped to his feet and ran forward to wrap his arms around Bill’s legs. “Hey kiddo,” Bill said, patting him on the top of his orange head. “Missed you too.”

“George,” the Professor said to the boy on the couch who seemed to be nodding off. “Why don’t you get to bed and get some sleep. You were very helpful tonight, thank you.” George seemed relieved and nodded, making his way sluggishly upstairs and leaving the other three alone in the dimly lit sitting room that was probably old enough and fancy enough to be called a parlor.

Professor Xavier wheeled forward and put his hand on Bill’s shoulder. “Normally we don’t allow this. New students are placed in dorms according to their age and gender, so I would separate the two of you and leave it at that if this were a normal case. But if this case were normal, Babe would be too young for my school regardless. So I have a solution for the time being while all of us adjust to this.”

He began to lead the two of them down another hallway but Bill interrupted his progress. “Uh, professor?” he asked.

“Yes?” the Professor answered.

“You ain’t really gonna separate us, are you?”

Professor Xavier smiled at the two boys. “No Bill. No I don’t think I could do that if I tried.” He stopped in front of a door at the very back of the house and let them in. One double bed sat in the corner of the room and a very small bed, clearly for someone who had just left their crib, sat in the other side of the room. “This room hasn’t been used for years, but I do like to be prepared for anything,” the Professor told them. “I trust that you can get to the kitchen for food and water easily if you need to throughout the night. And I will come by in the morning to talk some more and make sure you two are alright. But for now, you’re tired and need rest.”

“Thanks, Professor,” Bill said with a nod. “Say goodnight, Babe.” He gave the boy a little nudge, but Babe refused to say anything.

“I don’t think Babe will be talking to anyone for a while,” Professor Xavier said. He turned to Babe and put a hand on his tiny and narrow shoulder. “But it’s alright to retreat into yourself once in a while. There are lots of people here to take care of you now.”

Babe didn’t say anything but his wide brown eyes were blinking at the Professor’s blue ones like they were having a silent conversation. Though for all Bill knew, maybe they were. Professor Xavier had known Babe’s name right away and Bill could tell that the only reason why he asked questions instead of looking into their minds for the answers was out of courtesy. This was clearly the telepath that Henry had given them instructions to find and even though Bill was bone tired and still in survival mode, he felt safe here with the Professor. When Professor Xavier and Babe broke eye contact, he turned to make his way out of the room.

“Goodnight boys,” he said before clicking the door softly shut.

Bill let out a sigh that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in and methodically started checking over Babe to make sure absolutely nothing was wrong with him. No bruises or scratches, no more mud on his face, and no tears in those bright brown eyes. After months of worrying over the small boy, living in a house with a mother and father who had treated him so horribly that Bill’s stomach turned just thinking about it, seeing Babe so whole and _safe_ made Bill’s heart warmer.

“Come on, kid,” he said once he was sure everything was finally alright. “There’s a Babe sized bed with your name on it.”

Babe nodded and walked over to the bed, sitting on it and holding out his feet in a silent request for assistance. Bill rolled his eyes and untied Babe’s sneakers. “You know, sooner or later, you’ll have to do this on your own. This isn’t even the hard part, you just like being lazy.” Usually remarks like this would get some sort of comment out of Babe, but it seemed like the Professor was right about him not talking to anyone for a while. And after all of the change and trauma the poor boy had suffered, Bill could understand that wholeheartedly. He just wished there was more he could do.

“Goodnight Babe,” Bill said, tucking the little redhead under the sheets and going to his own bed before flicking the light off. He laid there in silence for a few long moments, staring at the ceiling and taking deep breaths. Though they’d only been traveling a few days, the journey north from Philadelphia had been so hard on the two young boys. Bill had used so much of his powers to make his arms stronger and hold Babe whenever he could, now his body felt like it would have to even itself out by loosening itself up and phasing through everything. Lying there in the darkness, Bill realized that he’d just about forgotten how it felt to have a pillow under his head at night and wondered if he would fall right through the bed in his sleep.

Just as his eyes were fluttering closed for the night, Bill heard movement from the other side of the room. He rolled over to see that Babe had gotten out of his bed and wandered over to stand next to Bill’s, frowning in the way that little kids did when they wanted something. Bill sighed. “Come on,” he said, lifting up the covers and inviting Babe up. His face broke into a smile and the back of his t shirt moved as the boy’s wings were attempting to stretch out.

“Here kid,” Bill said, changing the density of his hands so that he could easily rip two thin slits into the back of the shirt. “That better?”

Babe wiggled his shoulders around until his tiny white wings poked out and extended slightly. He smiled and nodded vigorously. “Okay good,” Bill said. “Now it’s way past your bedtime.” He laid back down and pulled Babe against him, draping an arm over top of the boy and holding him close. Bill stayed awake in the darkness until the child next to him started breathing slowly and his little wings stopped fluttering. He fell asleep with a smile on his face because he knew Babe had never been safer or more content in his entire life.

~          ~          ~          ~          ~

Bill woke up the next morning with a jolt, briefly having forgotten where he was and what he and Babe were doing there. After reassuring himself that everything was safe and there was no cause for alarm, he was suddenly aware of how hungry he was. The Professor had told him to help himself to the kitchen, so Bill attempted to get out of the bed without stirring the sleeping child with the twitching wings. He felt himself relaxing, loosening his molecules and becoming as light as air. Phasing through Babe was no problem, but since the kid was a menace, of course it didn’t work. The moment Bill was out of the bed and solidifying himself again, Babe’s eyes had opened and he was staring intently at the older boy.

Bill heaved a sigh. “You hungry?” he asked.

Babe sat up and nodded vigorously. “Well then let’s go,” Bill said, pulling on some shoes and huffing out a laugh when Babe held out his own tiny pair of sneakers. “I seriously gotta teach you how to do this yourself,” Bill said. He sat Babe down on the edge of the bed and tied the shoes, griping as Babe kicked his feet contentedly.

The kid looked better than he had in days, but his ginger hair was practically matted with knots. Bill shook his head and went over to the dresser in the corner, hoping to find a brush. When his search proved successful, Bill put one hand on the back of Babe’s neck and brushed through the knots with the other. Babe closed his eyes and smiled. “Much better, right Babe?” Bill asked with a smile of his own. “Now let’s go, I’m starving.”

They raced over to the kitchen together, not expecting to see anyone waiting there when they arrived.

“Hello,” said a young man, smiling warmly at the two of them. Bill couldn’t quite tell how old he was, his face was still boyish and he wasn’t very tall, but he definitely seemed to be an adult. “Professor Xavier would like to see you in his office, Bill. There’s a lot you need to talk about.”

The man smiled and crouched down to Babe’s level. “Hey there,” he said. “Wanna help me make some lunch?”

Babe looked up at Bill, wanting him to answer the question. “I gotta talk to the Professor,” Bill said. He patted Babe’s soft, downy feathers. “I’ll be right back.”

~          ~          ~          ~          ~

“You don’t need to worry about Babe,” was the first thing out of the Professor’s mouth when Bill entered his office. “Harry is back from college for the summer and his specialty there is young children. Those two will be just fine.”

The office was huge and had bookshelves of heavy leather volumes on all sides. The furniture was dark and regal looking. Bill had never seen anything like it, not even in the rest of the mansion and he spent a moment hovering nervously in the doorway. West Chester was nothing like South Philly.

“Please, sit down,” the Professor insisted. “I want to talk to you about the future of you and Babe here at my school.”

Bill nodded and sat down slowly, feeling intensely uncomfortable in the intimidating and lavish office. And despite the Professor being a comforting presence, he couldn’t keep his mind away from all the terrible things that could happen. What if Professor Xavier sent Babe away because he was too young? The boy couldn’t go back to his parents, Bill wouldn’t let it ever happen.

The Professor looked Bill over with sadness in his eyes. “To begin, I want to apologize to you.”

Bill was taken aback. “Why?” he asked boldly.

Professor Xavier sighed. “I have a way of locating mutant children across the country. Usually, that’s how they end up at this school. Sometimes their families know their situation and are supportive and bring the student here themselves. I also have several advocate families that I am close friends with who host rallies and go on talk shows; I’m suspecting the ones you saw were the Websters. But when the safety of one of you is in danger, it is my job to find you and bring you here. In Babe’s case, I failed to do so.”

Bill frowned. “I don’t really think it was your fault, Professor,” he said.

The Professor smiled at him. “Thank you for saying that, Bill. But even so, it is my responsibility. Someday we’ll have this conversation again and you’ll understand.” Bill nodded, though he wasn’t entirely sure that he knew what the Professor meant.

The two were silent for a long moment before Professor Xavier went on. “I’m assuming Babe was born with his mutation? And you were neighbors.”

“A lot of kids on the street knew about the baby boy who had wings,” Bill said. “Nobody really talked about it; I don’t think the adults knew. But my older brother Henry told me. He said that the Heffrons were ashamed that their son was a mutant.”

“Did Henry help you find your way here?” Professor Xavier asked.

Bill nodded. “He’d been watching the mutants on television for a while. And we’d been making friends with Babe, that’s how I found out I was a mutant too. He lived a few houses down from me and we’d sneak in after his parents had finished screaming and went to sleep. I was outside the house and I could hear Babe crying and I just wanted to get inside and help him feel better.”

“Tell me about Henry,” the Professor urged gently.

“He’s my best friend,” Bill answered without hesitation. “He’s twelve years old and he’s the only one who knows about me. He said that…” He trailed off and glanced down at the floor for a moment. “He said that he’d keep me safe from our parents finding out. And he’d help Babe and I get to your school. I don’t know how he found out where to go, but he did it for us.”

The two looked sadly at each other while the silence hung between them, almost a visual presence as the July sun caught small pieces of dust floating through the air. In a way, it looked beautiful, but mostly it just reminded Bill of why they were being so quiet. It almost felt as though someone had died. And honestly, he’d probably never see Henry again. So in a way, he was right.

“Bill,” Professor Xavier began carefully. “We both owe your brother a great deal. I hope that you will write to him to let him know that you and Babe are safe here and that we all greatly appreciate the sacrifice you boys went through.” Bill nodded, understanding how serious it all was.

“Now,” the Professor said, this time less sincere and more business. “You’re eight years old, yes?”

“Uh-huh,” Bill said. “Just turned eight last month.”

“Well, that would mean that you’d be placed in what we call our Level Two schooling at the beginning of next year. There aren’t enough students here on a regular basis to have traditional grade levels. It’s based on age, but a lot of times if students come in the middle of a year, I’ll have them placed lower so that they can adjust to their lives here. Would Level Two suit you?”

Bill thought for a moment. “Where would Babe be?”

“Babe is too young for our Level One program yet,” the Professor explained. “We’ve never had a case quite like him. But I’ll talk with Harry about what to do with Babe until he’s about two years older. Then he can join Level One.”

“Could I be in Level One instead?” Bill asked, earning him a surprised look from Professor Xavier. “I just don’t want to be away from him, he really needs me. So that way we’re closer together.”

The Professor smiled. “If that’s what you want to do, then that’s what I’ll arrange. There are four boys in particular in the Level One class that I think you’ll get along with very well. One you met last night, George Luz.”

Bill smiled back, pleased to learn that he would get to keep taking care of Babe. “What about our room?” he asked.

“Well,” the Professor began. “You seem comfortable where you are. I see no reason to move you boys until Babe is big enough for a regular sized bed.”

“So we can stay together?” Bill asked to make sure, sounding incredibly excited.

“Absolutely,” the Professor promised. “Now I think we’re done here. Head back to Babe in the kitchen and ask Harry about introducing you both to everyone in the mansion. You and Babe will have a family here.”

~          ~          ~          ~          ~

Bill could vividly remember rushing back into the kitchen, worried that Babe was still afraid of who, at the time, was a total stranger. Even though Babe still wouldn’t talk to anyone but Bill, and even then it was in small doses, he had started smiling again with Harry. They were floating around in the kitchen, Babe’s wings stretched out as though he really were flying while Harry used his powers to send them in circles around the room. Bill walked in to see them laughing together like he’d worried Babe would never really be able to do.

The two boys easily made friends with George, Frank, Don, and Skip due to the love of trouble making that they all shared. They had all suffered different trails before they came to the mansion, so everyone was very understanding of Babe’s refusal to talk for his first few weeks there. When he finally broke his streak of silence around others, it was during one of his silent conversations with Professor Xavier.

“I can’t go back to my Mommy and Daddy,” Babe had said, shrugging his shoulder nonchalantly. “They don’t want me because of my wings. Because there’s something wrong with me.”

Everyone was speechless at how to respond to such a wonderful young boy thinking that of himself and thinking that it was normal. It looked like the Professor was sad enough about it to shed a tear. But slowly everyone got Babe used to his wings and made him understand that there wasn’t anything wrong with him at all. And eventually, he learned how to fly with them, amazing everyone in the mansion with how impressive it was every time he managed to improve.

As they grew up together, especially in the first month or so at the mansion, Babe would sleep squished up against Bill’s side. Things in their dorm room were safe, comfortable, and quiet. They were alone to comfort each other and even as the years went by, some nights would still end with Babe lying beneath Bill’s arm. Even once they moved to a larger room on the second floor with two twin beds to accommodate their now grown sizes, Babe would still feel safest and happiest when Bill brushed the knots out of his hair or rearranged his white feathers.

Bill wrote letters to Henry and missed him every day since he’d left home. The brothers talked often, but Bill never asked how Babe’s parents, or his own, were reacting to their disappearance and Henry never offered up information about it. Bill felt like it was better that way, but so much of his life seemed to be missing. He’d look over at Babe, or think of Don and Skip and their time spent roaming the country, and remember what they had all chosen run away for. It would make him feel better, but still not whole.

“Bill?” Babe asked one day. He was eight now, the same age Bill had been when they’d made their journey to the mansion. God, he looked so young. And Bill wasn’t even a teenager yet. “You’re my best friend, right?”

“Of course, kid,” Bill assured him. “What’re you asking that for?”

“It’s just,” he said with a shrug. “I dunno. You’re not my brother, but sometimes it feels like you are.”

“Nah,” Bill replied. “You’re my brother, Babe. Always have been.”


	4. Lewis Nixon, age 28, is a teacher

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for commenting and giving me kudos. I hope you like this chapter, which turned out really difficult to write in the end. Sorry for the bit of a wait on this one, but I'd rather take my time than produce less-than-amazing chapters. I hope I captured Nix properly and that you're all ready for some major angst featuring Web and Lieb in the next chapter!
> 
> Also! Good Intentions now has fanart! Secretspy0404 has been helping me so much on this story, it could not exist without her and please go follow her on tumblr. Besides being a huge help and inspiration with this fic, she's insanely talented. Check out this gorgeous drawing of young Winters surrounded by wildflowers from the first scene of chapter one. http://secretwindows.deviantart.com/art/A-Miracle-471993868  
> EDIT: Art is now displayed throughout the fic, but you should still go and check out these lovely and talented ladies

The classroom was very large with wide, table-like desks each meant to fit two people and plenty of shelving space. The walls were a rich mahogany, just like the hallways and dorm rooms in the rest of the mansion, and sunlight streamed in through the wide windows that had been cracked open to let in the breeze. There were five power outlets, two sockets each. He could work with that.

There were more outlets along the counters, because spectrometers, lasers, and oscillators need to be plugged in nowadays. But as far as the kids were concerned, he could really just be saying _cause science_. He had mentally counted off ten of those before something caught his eye and distracted him. His room was completely free of decorations save for a poster with the periodic table on it and some extra reading materials in the corner. However, on his teacher’s desk at the front of the room sat a purple flower, perhaps a daisy, sitting in a beaker filled with water. Curious, Nix wandered over to it and noticed a folded note card sitting there as well. In careful but slanted handwriting, it read _“Welcome to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. I’m sure you will do very well here and I look forward to working with you in the future.”_ and was signed _Richard Winters_.

Nix chuckled at it incredulously before the door burst open and a young man with flaming red hair hurried in. “Oh gosh, I’m so sorry,” he said nervously. “I should have introduced myself before just leaving you a note on your desk. That was very rude of me, I’m so sorry.”

Eyebrows raised, Nix nodded and held out a hand. “Lewis Nixon,” he said as the man accepted his hand to shake. “But everyone usually just calls me Nix. And you’re Dick?”

“Excuse me?” the man asked, his face turning slightly pink.

“Your name,” Nix clarified, though he was laughing. “It’s a shortening of Richard, don’t people call you Dick?”

Dick shrugged. “Not really. I’ve always just been Richard.”

“Well do you mind Dick?” Nix asked, grinning to himself at the immature double meaning.

“No,” Dick replied. Then he suddenly realized Nix had set a trap for him. “No! I mean, not—”

Nix waved it off with his hand. “No, I’m sorry. That was mean. And a little bit more childish than my usual puns which really is saying something. Just wanted to see how flustered I could make you.”

Dick smiled at him, finally looking at ease. “Well, you succeeded,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s nice to meet you Nix. I’ve heard good things.”

“Really?” Nix’s eyebrows were raised again. “Well that’s not something people usually tell me. Though I suppose Charles has always been very generous.”

“Charles?” Dick asked, his voice slightly reverent. It was one of the reasons why Nix was endlessly grateful that he’d never actually gone to school at Xavier’s. The ones who’d been under the telepath’s care since they were boys always saw him as this holier-than-thou figure that they could never be casual around. Not that it was an entirely bad way to act, or that Charles didn’t deserve the title of holier-than-thou. But Nix just didn’t think he could stand calling the man Professor Xavier in every setting imaginable. It just wasn’t the way he was comfortable doing things.

Nix shrugged slightly. “He and my dad are good friends. I’ve known Charles for ages but never really spoken to him until I was considering taking up a job here. So I don’t really see him the same way you students here do.”

“Oh, well I’m not a student,” Dick clarified.

“A teacher then?” Nix asked, impressed that someone who looked just out of college had gotten a position.

“Well, no,” Dick answered, though Nix didn’t miss the disappointed look on his face when he said it. “I’m Professor Xavier’s teaching assistant, ever since I graduated from the program. I didn’t have the means to go to college or family to go back to, so I just… stayed here. He was nice enough to let me help out where I can. I love helping to teach his history class, it was my favorite when I was a student. So it’s never been any trouble on my part to just stay where I’m needed.”

Nix nodded, that sounded like just the type of thing that Charles would do. Though it almost surprised him the man himself hadn’t ponied up the money to get this kid an education outside of the mansion’s walls. Especially considering how enthusiastic he seemed about the subject that Charles had lovingly taught for so many decades. Wasn’t it about time the old man retired to admin duties anyway? But it is what it is.

“So,” he asked, changing the subject a little bit. “What’s with the flower?”

“Oh!” Dick replied, turning slightly pink again. “Well, daisies are supposed to be pure, simple, and innocent. And purple means things like charm and success. So it’s a good gift for someone that you want to get along with when you’re first meeting them. Technically, yellow roses are the best symbol of friendship, but I thought that would be a bit too forward considering that we don’t know each other yet.”

Nix’s mouth pulled into a smirk as he tried to keep a teasing grin off of his face. “Okay, so you really know your flowers. Where’d it come from I mean?”

“Well I made it this morning,” Dick explained. “When I heard you were coming today, I thought I should do something nice for you and almost everyone likes my flowers so…” he trailed off, looking awkward.

“You can make flowers grow?” Nix asked him. “Oh, I’m sure it was a field day of name calling when you had to pick an X Men identity. Flower Child, Mother Nature, that sort of thing? I still haven’t come up with mine yet. Nothing has been worthy enough so far.”

Dick was smiling, but Nix was pretty sure that he felt a little self conscious about it. “We haven’t really needed code names,” he said. “And it’s a bit more than just the flowers.”

“Oh really?” Nix asked, hopping up onto his desk. He was feeling truly interested in learning more about his new friend. He supposed that’s what they were now. There was a symbolic flower to prove it and everything.

“My powers are over almost all earthly elements,” Dick explained. “I can create quicksand out of nothing, make cave-ins or sinkholes. Even earthquakes when my powers aren’t bound.”

Nix’s heart stopped cold. “Your powers are what?” he almost shouted, using all of his restraint to keep his voice from thundering. The outlet closest to him was starting to spark and crackle while the lights flickered just enough to seem as though a power outage was threatening them.

“Well, when I’m not training, the Professor binds my powers,” Dick explained. “It’s much safer that way—”

“Safer?” Nix burst out. “Does the good professor do that to all of his students or just some? And how would anyone else even know the difference?”            

“It’s not like that,” Dick insisted. But the look on his face was a conflicted one. “I’m sorry. I should just go.”

Nix frowned. “No, Dick. You don’t have to—” But the man was already shutting the door behind him. Nix sighed and let his head droop.

After a few moments alone in the empty classroom, he got off the desk and started unpacking bins filled with classroom supplies. If each box of goggles and magnets and water droppers was set on to the counters with far more force than necessary, Nix tried to ignore it. And the crackling noise from a shorting outlet or two could be ignored until he was calm enough to fix the dumb things.

He really did believe that this was unacceptable. For once he wasn’t just trying to stir something up. Stopping mutants from fully using their powers seemed more like something bigoted humans would be in favor of rather than any sort of precautionary measure. Nix pulled a box of spare batteries out of the supplies bin and felt their currents flowing under his power. It made his fingertips tingle in the same way that whiskey and bad decisions usually would.

Bad decisions. He’d promised himself that this job was something important to him. He cared about students and having a reputation as someone qualified to help them through their most significant years of growth into adults. Far more responsible adults than he’d ever been. But responsible or not, Nix felt so strongly about this. And there was no way that the beloved Charles knew best when it came to everything. Nix put the batteries away and left the classroom in its state of almost organization. He had made up his mind to go and speak with the Professor right away.

~          ~          ~          ~          ~

His rapid knocking was only answered with a pleasant “Professor Nixon, please come in.”

Nix burst through the door right away, only taking the briefest of moments to be unsettled by the Professor knowing it was him at the door. “Good morning, Charles,” he hastily greeted, not wanting to sound rude, but also not wanting to waste time on social conventions. He opened his mouth to go on a rant about the freedom to exercise your own powers when the headline of the paper Charles had been reading caught his eye. _Magneto Followers on the Rise – Is Anyone Safe?_ His eyes darted to Charles’.

“Sit down please, Lewis,” Charles said calmly, flipping the newspaper over. Nix did so, his mouth open slightly and words unable to form. “I understand that you’re here about young Mr. Winters’ powers?”

Nix came to his senses. “Yes. I know it’s not my place to tell you how to run a school. Especially considering you just hired me,” he chuckled once. “But I completely disapprove of the methods you’re using to teach him and I’m worried about the other students as well. Will my classroom be filled with children whose powers are repressed? Because I cannot teach that. I can’t help someone who hasn’t been able to work with their own powers, sir.”

“I understand your concerns, Lewis,” Charles said. “But you should know that I explained to him how much I don’t like restraining children’s powers. He insisted because of how easily his powers could hurt someone. Of all the mutants I’ve ever encountered, Richard is one of the most powerful. But he is also one of the most dangerous.”

Nix nodded and let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “You’d never know by just looking at him.”

“All of the students are like that,” Charles agreed. “One of our most personable young boys has the ability to take our powers away completely using sheer energy. Meanwhile, our most intimidating teen has a power that he chooses to use almost exclusively for protecting others.”

“I still don’t like it,” Nix shook his head. “It isn’t right.”

“You have to remember that not all of my students were raised the way you were, Lewis,” Charles said, a slight tinge of scolding to his voice. “You were lucky as a legacy with the resources for home teaching.”

“It still isn’t fair,” Nix muttered under his breath.

Charles shook his head in agreement. “You’re right, Lewis. It isn’t fair at all.”

And of course, that gave Nix an idea. His head snapped up slightly. “What if I bargained with you? …Professor,” he added hastily.

“Bargained?” Charles asked, looking as close to surprised as Nix assumed a telepath could become.

“You said it yourself. None of the student here have the opportunities that I had. Dick told me he didn’t have any family left.” Charles raised his eyebrows at the nickname, but said nothing. “It isn’t my place to say any of this. I fully realize it. But you should really consider giving him a teaching position.”

The Professor’s face gave away more than it ever had before. Of all the things he thought Nix was about to say, he certainly hadn’t been expecting this. “Richard wants to teach?”

“He’d never say as much for himself, but I don’t need to be a telepath to see how badly he wants his own classroom,” Nix said.

“I could have sent him to school,” Charles said. It was difficult to tell, but the man looked to be upset with himself.

“You know he never would have asked you to do that,” Nix argued. “And I only met him for ten minutes. He loves your history class and knows the curriculum perfectly after so many years. Dick isn’t even that young! It’s been, I’m guessing what, at least six years of him as your teacher aid? That seems right, he can’t be more than twenty five.”

Charles’ brow furrowed. “Has it really been that long?” he asked himself, flipping the headline about Magneto back over so that the black and white photography was staring at him.

“Please just consider it,” Nix said, leaving the Professor alone to his thoughts for a while.

~          ~          ~          ~          ~

Nix spent most of his time after his intense first day setting up the classroom and making his bedroom into a livable home. It was another few days before he saw Dick again, standing outside his classroom door and grinning.

“You need something?” Nix asked with a smirk, unlocking the door and sitting down on top of his desk again.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Dick burst out. “I was going to come here and apologize about snapping at you the other day, but Professor Xavier called me into his office and I can’t believe you did that!”

Nix raised an eyebrow. “Did what?” he grinned.

“Don’t even joke,” Dick grinned back. “The Professor wants to try transitioning into solely being our principal and letting me teach his class full time. You did that, don’t even lie about it.”

He shrugged like it was no big deal, but still couldn’t keep the smile off his face. “Congratulations on that, I’m glad to hear it.”

“I still want to apologize, Lew,” Dick said seriously.

“No,” Nix cut him off before he could even go there. Though he did take note of the nickname he’d been given. “It’s me who should be apologizing. I didn’t let you explain or even try to understand why someone would want their powers suppressed. I’m sorry that I made such a big deal out of your personal decision. We grew up very differently, you and I. And I lose sight of that too much.”

Dick nodded solemnly and Nix took it as an accepted apology. “We were always just simple farm people. I chose to leave them behind me for everyone’s safety. And I chose to have Charles help with my decisions about my powers.”

“I understand,” Nix promised, his tone more serious than it had been in a long time.

Dick smiled softly. “So where are you from? How come you never came to school here?”

Nix smiled awkwardly back at him. “Well…” he began. “I’m from Nixon, New Jersey.” Dick laughed until he saw Nix’s face and realized that he was being completely serious.

“Wow,” he said sarcastically. “That is different from me.”

“Shut up, farm boy,” Nix quipped back at him. But it was good natured quipping, something Nix was only just getting used to. “My dad’s really well off, owns a huge portion of the town. So he had the money to teach me how to use my powers from home. It also doesn’t hurt that he and I are both electricity manipulators.”

“You’re a legacy?” Dick asked curiously.

Nix nodded. “In more ways than one. My folks could have done without me touching power outlets and attracting lightning as a kid, but they mostly just wanted me to grow up into an Ivy Leaguer. I went to Yale, just like dear old dad. Now don’t look at me like that!”

Dick shrugged. “I didn’t look at you like anything. Though I really should be going, I just came by to thank you.”

“Alright,” Nix said. “It’s the least I could do, you really deserve it, Dick.”

“Oh but before I go, that reminds me,” Dick said brightly, grabbing the now empty beaker from the counter and filling it with water. “Here, as a thank you.” Nix watched in fascination as Dick dipped his fingertips into the water and pulled them slowly upwards, creating freshly cut flowers from the bottom upward right before Nix’s eyes. It was flowing and beautiful and unlike anything Nix ever could have imagined existing.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely as Dick smiled at him and walked out the door.

The moment he was gone, Nix realized that the flowers left in the beaker for him were yellow roses. “You dork!” he shouted out the door after his (official) friend, only to be replied with bright laughter.

["Good Intentions" by macaronipuppies](http://macaronipuppies.tumblr.com/post/106754836102/my-friend-and-my-sister-wrote-this-amazing)


	5. David Webster, age 12, is an outcast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! Bet nobody was expecting this. So that was a really long wait between chapters. I'm so sorry, really really really sorry, about that for those of you who are following this fic. College definitely got in the way, but I never want to abandon this story. This chapter gave me lots of extra trouble as well. Lieb was intimidating me and I kept second guessing what to write and it just took me forever to get anything written down. However, there was a lot in this chapter so it's a bit longer than the others. I guess that makes up for it in a way. Thanks for the comments, kudos, and everything. Up next we've got Doc's backstory!

“We’re just so excited that David is finally old enough to come here,” Mrs. Webster gushed. “He’s just been looking forward to this day for years.”

“You didn’t want to enroll him as a first grader?” Professor Winters asked pleasantly. David would have opened his mouth to answer, but he knew his parents well enough to expect that they’d be delighted to answer the question on their own.

"Well," Mr. Webster began in his professional voice, "We wanted him to have a nice and normal upbringing so that his teen years could all take place here with people like him. The best of both worlds, if you will."

David rolled his eyes, but smiled anyway. He really did love his parents, but some of the things they said were so showy despite the absence of cameras. They hadn't found out about David's powers for sure until just a few years ago. Though David knew that they would have a highly publicized exposé of their human son attending Xavier's School if it turned out he hadn't been a mutant. It was, of course, more than likely that he would grow up to be a legacy. But still, when he wasn't turning invisible or flying by age seven, his parents were starting to get worried about how it would affect their role in the pro mutant public eye.

His father had always had very tough skin, even despite adaptability being his mutation, but David wasn't sure how they would take it if it had turned out that he didn't have powers. More often than not, he felt exploited at their peaceful press rallies where he would be forced to wear a suit and stand by his mother's side with some water close by so they could showcase his talents. It was a strained childhood his parents had given him, but David loved them just the same.

"I think that's very smart of you," Professor Winters told his parents, but David had the feeling that he was just being polite. He seemed the type to go out of his way to be nice to people whether he agreed with their beliefs on not. It was a lovely sentiment, but David partly wished that the young professor would say something about what he really thought.

He knew better by now than to expect that though, nobody ever spoke against his parents except for anti mutant groups. And even then, the Websters were seen as a bit too intimidating to be messed with. They were Ivy Leaguers, political representatives, and the perfect American family. Not even a parking ticket could be attributed to their bad deeds, so there was nothing that the opposing groups could use to drag them down or make them seem disrespectable. David was actually somewhat surprised that they hadn't both already attempted to run for president, even with all the backlash it would cause. He expected them to do so once he was eighteen.

"Thank you so much, Professor Winters," David's mother said in the sweet tone of hers.

"Are you two heading home now?" he asked, hoping that they would say yes so he could start actually meeting people on his own.

His parents chuckled at him in a way that would seem charming to anyone that wasn't David. To him, it just seemed patronizing. "Is my little boy excited to run off and be a teenager?" his mother asked.

David had to prevent himself from scowling. He hated it when his mom decided to be overly maternal. It didn't suit her at all and only served to annoy him further. "I just want to get settled in, mother," he deflected. "I can't do that while you're still here."

"Our son's right, dear," Mr. Webster said. David sighed. Now there was the tone that suited his dad, extremely impersonal but somehow still outwardly sentimental. Ever the politician. "We should say our goodbyes and head home. There's a conference tomorrow, after all."

Of all the things that excited David about starting at Xavier's School, missing those horrifically boring press conferences and projections meetings was almost at the very top of the list. He grinned. "Goodbye mom. Goodbye dad. Thank you so much for bringing me here."

His mother hugged him and appeared to be holding back tears, but she still had her politician face on, so David didn't entirely buy her reaction. His father clapped a hand on his shoulder and called him a man and quoted some dead and obscure military guy. David nodded like it meant a lot to him, but he honestly wasn't paying much attention. When they finally got into the Lexus and left, David heaved a sigh and let his shoulders slump, just like his mom would always passive aggressively talk him out of. "Oh honey, don't do that. It'll only make your posture worse when you're a teenager. And then it'll be too late," she would always say. The Websters were not a very carefree bunch.

Professor Winters smiled fondly at David. "So," he said. "Are you ready for the rest of the tour?" David nodded eagerly.

Classes were beginning the next day, so David and Winters hardly ran into any students during the tour. They were all in their dorms rushing to finish homework assignments and summer reading that they'd put off until the last minute. David got to meet a small group of nice girls, a few years older than him, who were lounging in the library and finishing _The Great Gatsby_ for their English class tomorrow. But other than that, he didn't come across anyone.

"Your level will have been finishing a book for the summer too," Winters explained to David. "I can't quite remember what it is, but Professor Lipton won't mind at all that you haven't read it since you just got here."

David nodded. "I can probably finish it by tomorrow if he still has copies," he offered. He'd always been a fast reader and English was his favorite subject. Being unprepared for the first day was like a nightmare to him.

Winters smiled at him. "Just don't stay up too late, David. It's a big day. I'll text Lipton and ask him to leave a copy in your dorm room for you."

Their tour had finally made its way outside to the ground surrounding the mansion. Professor Winters was pointing out athletic fields and running tracks when David noticed a large and flourishing garden settled behind the mansion. "That's beautiful," he said, mostly to himself. But Winters heard.

"Oh," he said, his cheeks coloring. "Well thank you."

David's forehead creased and he turned his head to Winters. "You did that?" he asked.

Winters shrugged. "That's the part of my power that's a gift. I'm growing all sorts of flowers and fruit trees and vegetables back there. Almost everything we eat here is fresh from that garden and if we ever run low on something. Well, I just grow some more. It's my favorite place on the entire mansion grounds. Would you like to see more of it?"

David nodded eagerly and the two approached the plentiful garden. It really was gorgeous, the only times David had seen anything like it was on orchards in the country. Though of course, while they were going over the many varieties of plants in the garden, something else caught David's eye.

"Professor Winters," he asked slowly, but his body could hardly contain his excitement. "Is that a pond?"

"Huh?" Winters asked, looking up. "Oh yes, we have quite a large pond that the Professor had a pavement put around a few years ago."

"Do you go swimming in the pond?" David asked, his grin ear to ear.

Winters nodded. "Yes, sometimes in the summer months. That's why the—" But when he turned his head to look at David, the boy wasn't there. He had already run towards the pond at full speed, jumping in with all his clothes on and not a care in the world.

David propelled himself to the bottom of the pond, it was maybe eight feet from the surface, and settled there comfortably. The water would have been too cold for most people, but it didn't affect David in the slightest. He laughed as tiny fish swam by him and greeted him in a chorus of high pitched voices. He always thought that was a bit ridiculous, actually being able to communicate with the fish, but simply having any water powers at all delighted him. Even though he expected to be compared to Aquaman now that he was in a school where people knew about his mutations. He'd been keeping his powers to himself for the past few years to please his parents' "normal childhood" anticipation. Still, being somewhere that he could tell people everything was worth a little teasing. Other than literature, nothing in the world made David happier than the water.

He just sat by himself on the bottom of the pond for a few minutes, until the underwater plants started to move a bit excessively. He grinned and swam to the surface. "Was that you?" he asked Winters, who was standing next to the pond looking one part fond and one part concerned.

"Just wanted to get your attention," he said. "If you want to have anything read for tomorrow, I'd go inside now. All that's left of the tour is your room."

David lifted himself out of the pond and summoned all of the water from his clothes back where it had come from. "You have a room by yourself for now," Winters explained to him. "Over the summer, we had two boys your age arrive at the school, so they've already been paired together. Both named Joe, of course, so that will be interesting for us teachers to deal with. And we usually like to give new students some time in a room of their own anyway, it helps them adjust."

When they arrived at David's dorm, he thanked Winters for the tour and started eagerly reading the book sitting on his desk that had been assigned for tomorrow's English class. Barely a paragraph into the prologue, he already loved it. _"Here is a small fact: You are going to die. I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. Please trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the A's. Just don't ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me."_

~          ~          ~          ~          ~

"So," Professor Lipton asked brightly. "How did you all like _The Book Thief_? I won't judge any of you if the ending made you cry." Several girls, and even a boy or two, nodded vigorously in response, while a few other students looked angry. One opened her mouth to comment, but Lipton held up a hand.

"Wait. Before anyone says a word about how the book ended, did everyone finish it? I don't want to ruin that for our new students." He indicated David and the two boys in desks beside his. David assumed that they were the two Joes that Winters had mentioned during his tour.

"I've got less than 100 pages left, Professor," David said. "And I think the book is brilliant."

"It's one of my favorites," Lipton agreed. "And only 100 left? I thought you just got here yesterday."

David nodded. "I did. But I'm a fast reader." The thin and wiry Joe directly next to him scoffed under his breath, but it didn't escape Lipton's notice.

"And what about you, Mr. Liebgott?" he asked. "Did you finish the novel?"

Liebgott shrugged. David noticed how many of the students in the room were looking at Liebgott intently now that attention had been drawn to him. Two of the girls in the back whispered something unintelligible, but David was pretty sure he heard the words "house fire". At that, he felt Liebgott's whole presence shift, his laid back position instantly closed off and his fists clenched on top of the desk.

"Did I finish the novel?" Liebgott repeated in a voice that struck David as nasally. His sneer had menace in it, but Professor Lipton just stood in the front of the room pleasantly, quietly waiting for an answer. "Well…" Liebgott drew out the word and David could tell how closely the other students were hanging onto it. He rolled his eyes. "Let's just say I didn't have to."

For someone who seemed to hate being whispered about, Liebgott really enjoyed attention. Lipton, once again, didn't seem to be phased. "And what do you mean by that, Mr. Liebgott?"

Liebgott shrugged, rebellious rather than nonchalant. David had to prevent himself from snickering. "The boxer gets sent off to a concentration camp. How else would the book end? The Jews get screwed over, as always."

"But still," David piped up, unable to hold in his reflexive literary analysis. "Max isn't the only character. What about Liesel and Rudy and the Hubbermanns? And if you didn't finish the book, how do you know if Max dies in the camp? I'm almost finished, but I couldn't stop now if I wanted to, the book is so captivating."

The look in Liebgott's eyes was close to murderous. "Are you saying that all the people sent off to that place didn't matter?"

David was shocked. "Of course not! I just--"

"Then why the hell did you say it?" Liebgott clutched at his desk, smoke beginning to stir beneath his hands.

"That's enough," Lipton said calmly as a very faint distortion of light spread out between David and Liebgott, a force field keeping them apart. David noted how the wafts of smoke were kept of Liebgott's side of the room and was grateful. “I know this is a tough book to get through, the Holocaust is a touchy subject. But I had hoped all of you would be up to handling mature discussions on it. It was horrific and it is so easy to offend someone, but that is the very reason why it must be studied.”

The second Joe, on Liebgott’s left side, shifted at his desk and finally spoke up. “We can handle it, professor,” he said in a very serious tone.  “Lieb and I got through the book.”

At his words, everyone in the room seemed to calm down. The temperature felt like it had dropped slightly, like a cool breeze was flowing through the classroom. At the sudden contrast in temperature, David realized how hot Liebgott’s temper had made the room become.

"Good," Lipton replied. "I'm going to pair all of you up and I want you to discuss your final thoughts on the book. But again, don't ruin the book for the new students who haven't finished it yet."

David hoped beyond hope that he would get paired with someone who wouldn't misinterpret is words like Liebgott had, but he'd never been that lucky. Professor Lipton looked at him and smiled softly. "It might benefit you two if you discussed your thoughts one on one?" Liebgott rolled his eyes, but he'd already adopted his flippant attitude again. David shrugged his shoulders, despite the displeasure that was most certainly showing on his face.

"If you say so, professor," he responded with all the respect his parents instilled in him. Liebgott's loud, exasperated sigh was ignored and Lipton went to go pair off other students.

"So…" David began awkwardly. "What did you think about—"

"Hey, do me a favor, would ya?" Liebgott asked.

David's brow furrowed. "I guess," he replied warily.

"Don't talk to me, okay?" Liebgott said. David waited for him to say something more, but it was unsuccessful. While others discussed their favorite parts of the book, David just sat quietly reading as many pages as he could and trying his hardest to ignore Liebgott. When the class period ended, word had gotten quickly through the hallways that Joe Liebgott had almost killed the Websters' son. Even though that story was ridiculous and very obviously an overblown rumor in David's mind, the other students were treating him like he had a target painted on his forehead. Apparently this Liebgott had some sort of a terrifying reputation that was keeping the other students away. David ignored it and went on as he would normally, but after a couple of weeks, nothing had changed.

Liebgott was still refusing to talk to him, despite the fact that teachers kept pairing them together in the hopes that they would form some sort of friendship. David didn't want to be friends with Liebgott, but he was also tired of the aggressive attitude that Liebgott constantly projected. He felt so bad about how Liebgott had reacted to him in Lipton's class on the first day. There was clearly something personal going on and the mutters in the hallways of how Liebgott was some sort of killer were not helping. What also didn't help was David's inability to make friends at Xavier's School.

Since his earliest childhood memories, David had loved nothing more than learning. It always made him stand out as different from the other kids, but until his mutations started to appear, he had never really cared. Now he felt truly on the fringes. But thankfully, he had one place that he thought would be safe to go and be himself.

~          ~          ~          ~          ~

David wasn't quite sure how he ended up in the large, leather chair in the corner of Professor Xavier's office. He remembered standing outside the door and unsuccessfully getting up the nerve to knock, but coming in and sitting down just weren't in his head for some reason. He would have been shaking from how strange he felt in the Professor's office if the room hadn't been so beautiful. It was all dark woods and leathers, but the windows were open and airy, shedding light on the thick volumes of classics that David was dying to read. The bookshelves were all floor to ceiling and dust free. The Professor was merely sitting at his desk, reading the newspaper with a focused interest. David shifted in his seat and took notice of the book sitting on the table next to his chair. It was a copy of _Treasure Island_ , one he'd never read before.

With a glance over at the Professor, to see if he was watching, David quickly took the book off of the table and began to read. About an hour had passed in total silence, when suddenly the Professor spoke. "How do you like it?" he asked. David jumped in the chair slightly, but the Professor continued. "I thought that a young boy out of his depth might be relatable for you. And I know how much you love the ocean."

"I like it very much, Professor," David said. "But I should leave and get my homework done. Can I come back tomorrow?"

Professor Xavier smiled warmly and nodded. "Of course."

David ended up back in the chair in the corner of Professor Xavier's office almost every day, devouring every book that was laid out for him. He loved the classics that included boys his age and he also had a fondness for the fantasies he read, _Voyage of the Dawn Treader_ became a favorite. Some days sitting in the office, they would be completely silent, but on other days they would comment on the books or David would read aloud to the Professor. David's favorite days included a few games of chess with the readings. He never brought up the subject of his difficulty making friends to the Professor, and he especially never mentioned the fact that Liebgott was still lashing out at him, but of course it always seemed like the Professor knew what was on his mind.

One day, just before Christmas, David went to the Professor's office only to find that it was locked. This had happened before, Professor Xavier had many meetings all throughout the year, but this time David was left waiting for the door to open for over an hour. When it finally did open, he couldn't believe what he was witnessing.

None other than a red faced Joseph Liebgott was exiting the Professor's office. He spotted David immediately, but his taunting had lost its usual bite. "What are you staring at?" he weakly demanded. David noticed that his eyes were wet. He shook his head.

"I was going to speak with the Professor, but it can wait," he said.

"Whatever," Liebgott replied. He began to walk off, but David noticed something in his hands.

"Is that a book?" David asked, trying his best to hide the fact that he was shocked. It was a thin black book with writing on the cover that David couldn't read, but it was unmistakably a book.

Liebgott whipped his head towards David, a look of menace on his face. "No," he drawled out sarcastically. "Course it's not a book. I got a new videogame, cause I'm too stupid to do anything but smash buttons all day and set shit on fire." The look on David's face must have been sympathetic because Liebgott's face fell and his shoulders gave their signature shrug. His anger seemed to have melted off of his body. "Yeah," he sighed, not meeting David's eyes. "I love to read. Though I prefer Flash Gordon."

David wasn't positive on what Flash Gordon was, but he figured it would be better to ignore it. "What is this?" David asked, trying to angle Liebgott's hand so he could get a look at it. "It's German, right?"

"Sure is," Liebgott replied. "I'm fluent. It's just something that the Professor thought I might want to have with me during the holidays."

David nodded. "Sure. Enjoy yours, will you be going home?"

The almost friendly air between the two boys vanished instantly. "Of course not! We can't all be you, with your rich parents and your fancy house and expensive gifts. Some of us don't have families at all."

"I'm sorry," David insisted. "I didn't—"

"Yeah, you didn't," Liebgott agreed before storming off and leaving scorch marks on the floor.

David felt horrible, but he was also finally realizing one of the reasons why he had been having such trouble relating to the other students. Liebgott was right; he was rich, spoiled, and he hadn't given much thought to the home lives of those around him. Liebgott's story was still a mystery, but David now knew what he might be able to do in the future. Because even though David didn't have many friends his own age at Xavier's school, he suddenly realized that Joe didn't either.

So a few weeks later, when Christmas break had ended and David and Liebgott were paired together again for all their classes, David had tried not to blame him for being too angry. It was certainly working in David's favor as far as keeping the peace between them went, even if they would probably never end up being friends.


	6. Eugene Roe, age 14, is a failure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Doc is finally introduced to the Xavier Mansion! (I also finally introduce Toye, but sadly he doesn't get to talk much in this chapter.) Hope you all enjoy the feels on this one. I'm really proud of this chapter, Doc was easy to work with and I love this kid so much even though I put him through a ton of tough stuff. He can make it, he just has to realize that he doesn't have to be alone. Please enjoy, comment, and start looking forward to the Babe centered chapter that is just around the corner. Fun fact, this chapter was the first one to be fully finished, way back in June last year, and it was also one of the easiest to write. I just put some final edits on it last night and it's ready for you all to read. I'm so excited.

Gene Roe had always loved his hometown along the bayous of Louisiana. He loved the heat and the sense of community and the lifestyle that no one from anywhere else in the world could truly relate to. He was just a quiet southern boy like any other and he had liked that life. There was nothing particularly special about him other than the fact that he had never lived or loved outside of Louisiana, which was exactly the way he liked it. Charles Xavier came to take him away from everything he had ever known right after the accident.

His grandmother had known. She had told Gene over and over again that he was special, far more special than just a wonderful grandson or a good person. She had always been known as a sort of healing witch doctor to the superstitious bayou natives. Gene had always thought the stories were just that, exaggerations and local legend meant to entertain the young ones of the neighborhood and explain away some of those inexplicable moments in life. But she had always insisted to him, whenever they had a private moment together, that he held a power like hers. Even then, Gene only ever assumed she meant her helpful and selfless nature, her calming power over French words and old prayers. He had always felt they shared a connection in that respect, but he had never believed there was a real, literal power to it all.

When they got into the accident, his grandmother had already passed away. The few doctors that she agreed to see claimed it was cancer that took her in the end, but she had never gone along with any of their diagnoses. Everyone in their town whispered about how the sickness she had taken away from others was finally catching up to her. Gene often wondered if her death had been what fully passed her power onto him. But after speaking with Professor Xavier, nodding in all the right places and never saying a word in argument or agreement, he was more unsure than ever about the power that his grandmother had held. Unfortunately, there was also no mistaking Gene’s own powers anymore.

Gene couldn’t even remember what had caused the accident. He had overhead the police discussing many different stories and any number of them could have been his own, but every time they tried to explain things to him face to face, Gene seemed to go numb everywhere and couldn’t retain a single word they had just told him. He tried so hard to convince himself it was better that way. Professor Xavier had spoken softly to Gene as he explained what had really happened and because he never touched upon the accident itself, Gene supposed it hardly mattered anymore.

All Gene did know was that one moment, he and his parents were driving home when suddenly there was a sharp impact and Gene was no longer in the car. Instead he was on his hands and knees on the side of the road, completely unharmed, while his parents were still in the car that had crashed several yards in front of him. Gene had run to the car, breathing heavy and somehow not crying, when he got to them. They were both still alive, but bleeding so much that Gene felt overwhelmed, as though their blood was coming from everywhere. But somehow he knew, just by looking at them shuddering out all the breaths that they could in that car, Gene _knew_ what injuries they had. He felt his hands drawn towards the injured parts of his mother and father, he felt like he could help them if only he touched what was wrong. But it didn’t work.

Gene had placed his hands on their wounds, muttering quietly in a frantic mixture of English and French and prayers and nonsense. It had seemed to do something, his parents’ faces looked like their own again rather than filled with heart stopping terror. But as quickly as they looked up at their son and smiled like he was their world, they were gone. And Gene felt their lives end, right there in front of them. It was the worst physical sensation he had ever experienced, as though all of his own vital functions had stopped as well, even if just for a moment.

Everything after that horrible moment was blurred for Gene until Professor Xavier had showed up in the hospital and explained all that had happened. When he learned of a fatal accident outside of Baton Rouge that had miraculously left one boy completely unscathed and somehow outside of the wrecked car, Charles knew right away what he had been dealing with. “From everything I’ve heard about the accident and your grandmother and what you did for your parents, there is no doubt in my mind that you possess multiple mutations that serve to protect yourself and others. Would you mind?” he asked, offering to read Gene’s mind and sense something that Gene himself could never understand on his own.

Gene simply nodded and waited as Charles brought forth visions of himself creating some sort of energy ball, a force field that had kept himself uninjured and allowed him to escape the car wreck. The feeling of being able to sense his parents’ injuries had proved correct and his healing abilities were trying and failing to save their lives. But in the end, Gene’s panicked voice had calmed them until they had died and he felt all that they had in that moment. Reliving it through Charles’ thought probing was horrible and Gene felt as though everything he had left in the world was crumbling away. He could have saved them. He had a mutation, Charles described it as an evolutionary gift, that gave him the power to heal other people and yet his parents had died in front of him. And Gene hadn’t suffered from a single scratch.

So when Professor Xavier offered Gene a permanent place at his school for other young people with mutations, somewhere that he could learn to actually be useful, Gene nodded without a second thought.

~          ~          ~          ~          ~

Gene had never been outside of Louisiana before, let alone this far north. He had wanted to leave home as quickly as possible, run away from the painful memories and never look back. But nothing in life was that simple. The autumn leaves on the upstate New York mountains were beautiful, but he missed the hot air and the accents and the smells of the swamps. Here, Gene was a stranger to everything, but he needed to train at this school and there was no one left at home to go back to.

A young professor, Richard Winters, was told to show Gene around the large mansion. Winters was very polite and welcoming, but despite how much Gene liked the man, he couldn’t get comfortable with the situation. He spent most of his tour in silence, admiring the beauty of the place but feeling completely out of his element. He perked up a lot when showed the infirmary, determined to start work there right away so that he would never feel someone die again. Not when he had the power to save them. They’d seen several classrooms and met a few teachers and young students, but no other teenage students like himself until they got to the rec room.

A group of no more than ten boys was sitting around in the room, playing cards or videogames and talking loudly amongst themselves, when Gene walked in. “Hey Winters!” one of the redheaded boys playing cards shouted. “Who’d you bring us?”

“Hello Don,” Winters replied. “Boys, this is Eugene Roe and he’s just arrived. I’m showing him around for now, but soon you’ll all have classes together.”

“Eugene?” the other redheaded card player asked, looking Gene up and down and grinning like someone had told a joke.

Gene nodded. “It’s still a pretty common southern name,” he said, somewhat defensively.

Another boy at the card table laughed. “Where you from, Eugene?” he asked in a heavy Philadelphia accent.

“Louisiana,” Gene responded tersely.

The boy with the Philly accent nodded. “Cajun then?” he asked.

“Half,” Gene corrected. “My mother’s side.”

The boy opened his mouth to speak again, when suddenly one of the videogame players on the couch started shouting. “Web, you dirty son of a bitch!” he yelled, all but throwing his controller at the other player.

Professor Winters looked offended. “Joe, I’ve told you dozens of times. I don’t want to hear you swearing at anyone, especially David anymore.”

“Aw, c’mon Winters!” Joe whined. “It’s the rec room. What good is it to have a rec room if we can’t swear up a storm in it?”

“That would only be a standing argument if you knew any words other than profanities,” the other boy on the couch, David, muttered under his breath. He had barely moved since Joe’s outburst, but Gene noticed a slight pink tinge to his cheeks when Winters had singled him out as someone who Joe wasn’t supposed to swear at.

“What did you say, asshole?” Joe shouted, getting to his feet now.

“Joe,” Winters said, his raised voice a sharp warning that made everyone in the room cringe. “Don’t make me tell you again.”

Joe nodded and sat down. “Yes sir,” he said quietly.

The room fell silent, somewhat awkwardly, and Gene turned to Winters. “What’s next, professor?” he asked, wanting to break some of the tension.

Winters sighed. “Actually, Gene, I think this is the end. Professor Speirs should have taken your things up to your room by now, so you can either go back there and get settled in or stay here with the boys. It’s all up to you. But I’ve got to get back to grading your tests,” he said to the boys in the room, a hint of teasing in his voice. They all groaned.

“You’re going easy on us, right?” the first boy, Don, asked. “First test of the school year and all.”

“Like that’d ever happen, Malarkey,” a brunette at the card table responded.

The smaller redhead at the table laughed until his Philadelphia friend elbowed him in the rib cage. “Be quiet, Babe. Winters’ tests get harder every year, just you wait.”

Winters rolled his eyes and waved to everyone. “I’ll see you in class on Monday, boys.” He paused and briefly took a hold of Gene's shoulder before leaving the room. "Can I talk to you for a few moments out in the hall, Gene?" he asked. Gene nodded and followed with a weak enthusiasm. These boys seemed a lot tougher and rowdier than he had expected from a private school like Xavier's, regardless of the students' various mutations.

"Are you feeling alright, Eugene?" Winters asked him, a very serious look on his face.

Gene's brow furrowed. "Of course I am, sir," he responded. "I'm here to learn."

Winters nodded. "Okay well. Just try not to be too intimidated by the boys. They'll be hard on you for the first few days, but they've all got good hearts and everyone's got a tough background. They'll open up pretty fast if you let them." Gene nodded, but he still felt uneasy. It seemed to placated Winters at least.

"That's good. Oh, and try not to worry about Joe and David. They've had problems with each other since they each first arrived. That display was the two of them being friendly if you can believe it. They're growing on each other, you'll see." With that, Winters took a deep breath and headed off. The moment he left, everything was still, even inside the rec room, and Gene sincerely regretted not going with Winters or back to his new dorm. The boys in the room could easily surround him and it definitely felt like they already had, but he might as well do as Winters advised and go back in.

“Well,” the Philly boy drew out. “Guess I need to tell you who everybody is.” Gene stayed where he was as the Philly boy identified himself as Bill Guarnere, the redheaded Don Malarkey, his best friend Skip Muck, quiet and dark Joe Toye, small and ginger Babe (Babe? Really?) Heffron, tiny Italian Frank Perconte, loudmouth George Luz, and the two feuding videogamers Joe Liebgott and David Webster.

“So,” Luz asked, a glint in his eye. “What mutation do you have to add to our merry band of weirdoes?”

Gene drew his eyebrows together and frowned. “Nothing really,” he said, refusing to explain. He was a healer who didn’t know how to heal with a sixth sense that was completely useless until he learned. And he hadn’t been able to summon a force field, no matter how hard he tried, other than the one time it saved his life in the car crash. “Nothing,” he repeated.

An awkward silence filled the room again and Gene took slight comfort in it. At least no one would learn about his failures if they never asked him. “Should we deal you in?” Perconte asked, attempting to fix the awkward situation by picking up the cards for another round.

Gene shook his head. “No, I should go,” he said. He left the room without another word, but he caught Liebgott’s voice hissing sharply on his way out the door. Something about being a rude jerk probably.

~          ~          ~          ~          ~

Professor Xavier had allowed Gene a few days to get settled in before his classes started, for which he was extremely grateful. He got to spend those days avoiding the other boys his age, but mostly learning control over his healing powers from the school’s nurse Renee LeMaire. She was a young woman from Paris whose family had known the Professor for decades and trusted only him to be the one to tutor their mutant children throughout the generations. She was extremely kind and patient with Gene, sharing everything she knew about being a healer and calming others. Her touch managed to calm her patients, as Gene’s voice had with his parents, and she used the talent on Gene sometimes in order to help him focus on his training rather than his previous failures.

"The power to heal is not a gift from god, Eugene," she would remind him during their training sessions when Gene would make a mistake or relive the accident and begin to doubt everything about his powers and their existence. "This power is too painful to those who have it. But it can become a gift to those we use it on."

Beyond the powers that Nurse Renee held and the constant support in Gene's abilities that she provided him, Gene found many other comforts in her. The moment she heard him speak, she recognized the accent and began to chatter in French to him as though they were old friends. Both of them tended to keep to themselves other than the fast paced French speaking that reminded Gene so forcefully of his grandmother. Renee also loved to spoil Gene, giving him pieces of chocolate to “prevent wasting away on the job”. He thought Renee’s efforts were sweet, but Gene hardly focused on anything but learning everything he could about the human body and treating injuries. Renee showed him how to search for them with his extra senses and pour out a healing energy through his hands, but Gene was almost manic with gaining knowledge of everything that would help him to save people.

The first few weeks of classes and healer training were hardly as intense as Gene was making it out to be through all of his extra efforts, but that was mainly down to the Professor. Students were organized by grade differently than average schools due to the fact that students were coming in at any time of year and there weren’t enough to make up full classrooms of people all the same age. At around age fifteen, once they transitioned into what could be considered high school, students started training in fight simulators as a part of their lessons. Gene was almost at the right age, but because he was entirely new to his powers, Professor Xavier placed him in the younger group of students for the time being. Gene was repeatedly assured that this happened all the time, but he was mostly pleased to be put somewhere that it wouldn’t be too obvious how hopelessly behind he was. Besides, it just made avoiding the boys he had met on his first day a lot easier for him.

Gene didn’t mean to be rude, like Liebgott had complained about. He just didn’t want to make connections with anyone, despite the advice that Winters had given him. He had been unable to save his parents and the only thing that mattered to him was atoning for that. In a class filled with people a year or two his junior, Gene was able to sit in the back and endure being stared at, but avoid all the questions that he knew the boys he’d already met would be bound to ask. The only one in any of his classes that Gene really felt he had to worry about was the small redhead, Heffron. The kid never shut up in class and Gene was sure that whenever Heffron ended up staring towards Gene’s seat, silent for once, that he was dying to open his mouth and ask for the answers that Gene was terrified to reveal.

But after learning all the basics from Renee and somehow managing to keep Heffron from actually speaking to him, Gene was suddenly flooded with some actual work. The simulation training had finally begun and the students who were new to actual fighting kept getting themselves into danger and ending up on one of the hospital beds, loudly proclaiming that it was awesome and they couldn’t wait for more. Hardly anything more than cuts, scrapes, and an occasional broken bone went through the infirmary because of it though, and Renee would usually oversee as Gene mended the injuries in order to get real world practice with his developing skills.

The first actually concerning injuries came through after about a week of the young boys' first lessons in combat training with Professor Speirs. A large and blonde older student, Gene recognized him to be Randleman, carried over a convulsing Joe Toye while Bill Guarnere limped beside them. “What happened to them?” Renee demanded of Randleman as he laid Toye down in one of the beds.

“Accident in training, Joe’s power is pretty unpredictable. His injuries keep changing.” At that, Renee immediately began placing her hands on his forehead to calm him and search for ways to heal whatever it was that was wrong. “This one,” Randleman said, jerking a finger in Guarnere’s direction, “He was just stupid.”

“Hey!” Guarnere argued, lowering himself onto the bed next to Toye’s. “I was just trying to help Joe. If I hadn’t done anything—”

“He would have been fine,” Randleman said firmly. “It’s a simulation training system, everything in the environment is controlled. We’ve had plenty worse go wrong without on site healers to fix us up and still gotten out of it fine.”

“You’re killing me here, Bull,” Guarnere griped.

Randleman glared. “Not my fault you tried to be the hero.”

Guarnere continued to mutter angrily to himself while Renee tended to Toye and intently asked questions about the nature of Toye’s mutation and the manner that he had been injured. "It's a strange mutation, ma'am," Bull explained. "A defense disguised as an offense, Speirs keeps calling it."

"Yeah, uh, it adapts to whatever mutation his opponent has," Guarnere explained, scrunching up his face as he tried to come up with words to describe it. "Like if he's fighting against Liebgott and his fire, Joe can suddenly gain the ability to freeze things. That way, every fight is an equal one."

"Well I am sure that is useful in training, but his power is trying to reject my healing," Renee said in a low voice, almost to herself.

Joe coughed, barely managing to get out any words. "Sorry about that, Miss," he managed. "I'm trying to hold it back." For what seems like ages, it was a fight between Toye's instincts to fight off the mutations of others and Renee's attempts to help him stop convulsing. Eventually, she managed to calm Toye down enough and heal some of his problems that he stopped shaking. Renee sighed with relief and turned to Guarnere. “What happened to you?” she asked.

“Pretty sure my leg’s broken,” Guarnere said. “Problem is, I was caught halfway through a phase while it was happening. I can’t control it, feels like my leg is either jelly or concrete every other second.”

“Eugene,” Renee implored, her hands still on Toye’s forehead. “Can you please try to help him?” Gene opened his mouth to say something, but Renee cut him off before he could. “I know it’s asking a lot of you, but you can calm him and take away some of the pain until I have time to look at him properly. I trust you, Eugene.”

Gene’s eyebrows drew together, but he nodded. Despite all of the doubts that he had about himself, Renee believed that he could do this and she needed him to help. It’s what he was meant to do, after all. He sat down on the chair next to the bed Guarnere was now, with Randleman’s help, laid out in on his back.

“How you doing, Guarnere?” Gene asked him, doing everything he could to instill his voice with calmness like Renee had showed him.

Guarnere chuckled. “Just fine, Doc,” he said.

“Don’t call me that,” Gene bristled, his voice breaking the calm. The moment it did, Guarnere winced and Gene felt terrible. He was already messing everything up. “Is it alright if I touch your leg? See if I can heal it?”

Guarnere nodded. “Do what you have to do, Doc. I mean—”

Gene shook his head. “It’s fine. Whatever you want.” The words were spoken slowly and his touch was as light as possible. “You feel anything? Better or worse?”

“Bit better, I think,” he said. “But it could just be your voodoo mind tricks.”

At that, Gene wanted to snap at him again, but he needed to keep his voice level and keep talking. “So your powers. You shift between, what, density I suppose? Always phasing through walls like a ghost or breaking cars apart like—”

“Bull over there?” Toye muttered from the other bed, receiving some laughter from Randleman.

“Something like that,” Guarnere agreed.

“Which were you trying when this happened?” Gene asked, finding the break in the leg, but not knowing how to heal it. It was changing, like Guarnere had said.

Guarnere sighed. “I was pulling Joe there out of the way,” he said. “I tried to make us less dense, let the danger go straight through us. But Joe was already hurt and not in control of his power. And since his always adapts for combat, well. We got caught in a bad place and now neither of us will stop changing densities.”

Gene nodded. Knowing the whole story certainly helped to explain why the break in Guarnere’s leg felt so strange, but it got him no closer to fixing it. “I suppose the thing to fix would be your control over the phasing before I try and fix that leg of yours.”

“Whatever you say, Doc. Just keep working your healer magic. Hurts like hell otherwise.”

Gene was about to keep talking, explain that he wasn’t nearly advanced enough to fix the control over a mutation but that he would do everything he knew how until Renee figured out Toye’s problems, when another person appeared. “What happened? What’s wrong?” a familiar voice asked frantically. Heffron had burst into the infirmary and was rushing towards Guarnere’s bed after pausing wide eyed in front of the still pale Joe Toye.

Guarnere groaned. “Oh, really. What the hell are you doing here, Babe? Who even told you this happened?”

“Luz,” Heffron said with a shrug, as though it should be obvious. “He said there was an accident during training. I came right away.”

“Damn it, Luz!” Guarnere snapped and Gene had to hold his shoulder down to keep him from sitting up and moving too much. “I told them not to let this get back to you. Having you panic and run down here was the last thing I wanted. And what is this shit?” he demanded, gesturing to the oversized Phillies hoodie that Heffron was wearing. Gene narrowed his eyes and looked Heffron up and down, only just realizing that the only shirts the boy ever seemed to wear were cold weather clothes that were far too large for him.

Heffron looked hurt. “What do you mean? You didn’t want me down here?”

“I mean I didn’t want you freaking out,” Guarnere said with a powerful eye roll. “And stop taking my clothes, Babe!” That explained why the pullover seemed about two sizes too big.

Heffron reflexively stuffed his hands in the large front pocket of the hoodie and hunched his shoulders. “Bill, please don’t. You’re hurt and…” he trailed off.

“Sit down and give me my god damn jacket,” Guarnere said.

Gene immediately cut in, wanting to diffuse the situation and get Guarnere calmed down again. “Nobody needs to panic and nobody needs to order anybody else around,” he said, firmly but instilled with peacefulness in mind. “Everyone should sit down or lay back. Get comfortable and stop worrying.” Guarnere and Heffron both obeyed his command, to his utter surprise.

“It’ll all be okay, Doc?” Heffron asked him, still looking very concerned over his friends.

Gene’s face fell and he huffed. Was everyone in independent agreement that his nickname was Doc now? He ignored it though and aimed for the serenity that the Professor had spoken so reverently about. “Both of them will be just fine, Heffron,” he promised.

But for some reason, that didn’t seem to work. Heffron snapped out of the trancelike state Gene’s voice had put him in. “Heffron?” he asked. “What are you calling me that for?”

Gene’s brow furrowed. “Isn’t that your name? Do you prefer Edward?”

“Edward?” Heffron all but shouted at him. “Damn it, Doc, not even the Professor calls me Edward!”

Guarnere was laughing under his breath and Gene was completely lost, but he decided to move on quickly. “Guarnere, are you still feeling pain?” he asked, desperate to change the odd subject.

“Sure am, Doc,” he deadpanned. “Any chance of changing that?”

Gene opened his mouth, floundering hopelessly. “Not until Nurse Renee can come fix you up. I don’t really know—”

“Not too good at your job?” Guarnere accused with raised eyebrows. Heffron turned to them and gaped, cutting in.

“Hey, Bill, don’t. He’s just trying to help.”

Guarnere crossed his arms. “Whatever, everyone just shut up, would you?”

Before Gene could think of anything to say or do next, Renee came in to save him from the mess he’d made. Toye was still in the next bed, his eyes shut after Renee had figured out how to sedate his always-changing mutations. “His is stranger than this one,” she said, running a hand down Guarnere’s twitching leg. “I will need time to learn from this and help him as best as I can. For now, I will fix this leg far faster. And when he wakes, it will be better.”

“Thank god,” Guarnere let out. “Any chance of me getting sedated too?”

Renee practically glared at him. “Not at all,” she said, gripping onto his leg. Guarnere gasped out in pain for a moment, but it faded quickly as Renee used her hands to solve his hurt. Gene was in awe, but he saw Heffron look close to terrified when it looked like his friend was suffering.

Gene touched his shoulder briefly. “He’s gonna be alright,” he said in his long, southern drawl. “Just fine.” Heffron visibly relaxed as Gene spoke and he was grateful to have been able to solve just one thing today, even if the rest had been failures.


End file.
